Summer Character Workshop - The Baker

Hi guys! I got the incredible chance to join in on Mr Almighty Gir's / Lee Devonald's Summer Character workshop.The next 6 weeks we're gonna go over the whole process of creating a character - from sculpt to texture all the way to Unreal - and I'm going to share my process in this thread.

Yesterday we started off with picking a subject out of the concepts we had gathered. Thinking about color schemes, silhouettes, dynamic pose/postures, material definitions, etc I made a decision.

I wanted to do one of the Marco Polo characters for a while, but since their outfits are either very plain or very complex (hundred eyes vs chabi for example) I decided to go in a totally different direction. Lee also reminded us that the type of characters we have on our portfolio will be the type of characters we'll get commissions for.

I started breaking down the concept to understand better what I'd be up against in the coming weeks.

I'll be looking at Rapunzel from Tangled for the material definition of the dress and skin, other areas were clarified where the illustration wasn't clear enough to start modeling.

Since the illustration is cut off at the legs I had to make an educated guess on how tall she should be.For the shoes I tried to find a good match for the outfit and style. Since there are quite some bows present in the piece, I figured it would work well on the shoes as well. This might be reconsidered once I have a model to test it on, of course.

beautiful concept. I hope you can make it work in 3d, its a very stylized design. I think you need to make the legs even longer though. right now its making her neck look unproportionality long. it works better in the concept/sketch because all the features are stretched out the same amount, but in your scupt its looking a bit short.

Looking forward to seeing your progress. I'm a bit concerned that the pouty mouth may not translate well to 3D. If that ends up being the case, don't be afraid to tweak it a bit so it looks good in the round, even if it doesn't match the concept perfectly from the profile.

With the blockout I made in Zbrush last time, I took it to Max for some good old retopping. I already had a strong idea of how all loops should go and why, but what Lee taught us was how to do it within record speed. I spent about 1 short day worth's time on mine, and had almost no difficulties solving problem areas. Thanks for the tips, Lee!

The method we used goes as follows:Place a cylinder around the chest, one around a leg and one around an arm. By counting in multiplications of 4, connecting the separate parts should go easy later on. Here I used 32 edges for the chest, and 16 for the leg and arm.By using the Conform brush, Relax Conform brush and Relax/Smooth I could snap the cylinders perfectly to the surface.I used them mostly in that order - snapping to surface with conform, then relaxing with whatever one of the two did the job.By closing the mesh around the crotch, I created a perfect border to bridge the leg to.For the chest I had to make a hole to attach the arm to, so I counted the nr of edges on the arm (16) and created a hole that had as many edges. EASY!!!For the boobies I simply selected an appropriate amount of polys, made an inset and a couple of extrusions. Relax conform and .... boobs.

The fingers went the same way. I made one, copied it over and bridged it to the arm.The tricky part here was again matching the nr of edges on the hand and the arm.

Now, for the face I started taking more and more screenshots. It resulted in a video showing which steps I took. Check it out here:

To make the model export ready I had to center the middle vertices, center the pivot point and add a symmetry.I thouroughly went over all the area's with the relax brush to even out the spacing, after which I deleted half again, reapplied the symmetry and exported.

Once appended to the right tool in Zbrush I subdivided the mesh to double check for nGons,tris, unwelded verts or holes. When I discover such a thing, I just use GoZ to quickly bring the mesh back to Max, fix the issue and GoZ it back to Zbrush. This method will make sure any progress I already made on the retopped mesh (subdivs, maybe already projected stuff, ...) will remain, because of the "transfer high res detail?" option you get. It has saved my ass a lot of times!!!

I've been behind on the others a little bit, but trying to catch up this week.

This is my progress so far, been blocking out and tweaking proportions at the Gamescom this week :awesome: Horns and color are totally placeholders. Next up, ribbons, bows and shoes. UUuuuu C&C many welcome!

Really cool so far!One thing I noticed was that she has a pretty flat head in the concept and you had that down in the initial blockout. But adding the hair has kinda given the head more volume than that. The horns are also extending a bit farther back from where they end in the concept.Now if you're doing that deliberately ignore everything I said

Lotet, the skirt and overal outfit needs to be fixed further, adding thickness etc will be done soon. I didn't notice the skirt having a bit too much detail, you might really be right. Polymator, this I also hadn't noticed yet. I knew I couldn't follow the concept 100% because of stuff that might not work in 3D, but what you're pointing out was not deliberetaly. Thanks for that!

In any case, I have a full blockout now (the shoes have been added nstuff), so I will do a good revision of proportions, shapes and how well I'm following the concept. Update on its way :proud:

It's a nice cartoon, what I have trouble with is not so much your model but whoever made that concept. Why give a black character blonde hair? This is a troubling thing I've noticed online among young black minorities, they draw their "OC's" (Original chracters) as white. It's obviously them subcounciously rejecting black culture, but I still find it a bit disturbing to look at. Especially when it's not done by styles of clothing but by skin and hair color. It's fine that you love cartoons that look like that, but I think you would do 7 year old black girls a favor by giving your model black hair. What I'm trying to say is that the blonde hair isn't necessary and in bad taste on a black girl. It would be in bad taste on an asian too, just like black hair would look bad on a ginger. But keep on cartooning.

If it's "just a cartoon, for fuck sakes." You would have no reason to take offense to my comment. Shanana said the colors were placeholders, all I suggested was that making the hair look black might look better since it's a black person's natural hair color. How is this offensive or a pointless suggestion, some people...

Oh and I don't think it is obvious what race she is, she could really be any kind of human, I wouldn't worry about the hair colour Leinadien. Lots of cartoon concepts of every race have the same sort of generic face. Just look at Lolish's stuff.

So I hate to break it to you, but I'm not gonna change the hair color to black. The colors have been chosen according to a certain artisticly deliberately chosen color pallette, and that's all I see and will take into account. Not a black 7yo girl who will lose confidence in herself because of this artwork.

She has an extremely thin waistline too. Anyone?

Natland, you're very much right. It's not 100% clear what the race is, and that's both nice and hard to sculpt... I'll take a look at those hands today. Want to finish the sculpt by tomorrow !!! :awesome:

@leinadien Yeah, those horns are such a dead giveaway that this is a black person, it's impossible that this character lives in a world where there are other races than the ones in ours, sigh, some people indeed.

@Shanana Love the character so far, can't wait to see when the details in the clothing come into place! I'd give the folds on the arm "thingys" a bit more love, I'd look at the concept for inspiration on how to sculpt it. Keep at it!

Thanks for the kind words! @Maxilator, yes I just got a tip from Leslie on how to tackle the puffy sleeves, so I'll definitely will give them some love ^^.

In the meantime I've been working to get the sculpt ready so I can move on to UV's, bakes and textures. Hell, I might even sneak in some rigging.

Here's some progress:

I made a big change, however, all the way towards the end, and I'd like to hear your opinions about it. I tried to follow the concept more accurately and so had to make the hair less voluminous, and her face less round (front view).

L is the old, R the new

Next I'll try to add a final polish/detail pass on a couple of things (read: everything). I've been behind the workshop a bit anyway so I'm not gonna texture until my fingers stop itching to add to the sculpt. Imo a style like this can benefit more from a killer sculpt than a killer texture, so I feel like I can spend some more time on it...

I'm loving this so muchher hair is so pretty >.> . interested to see how you tackle it in low polythe only thing bothering me is her mouth . i know your trying to follow the concept but it doesn't translate well into 3D IMOmaybe I'm wrong but i think the artist intended a facial expression ( like a kiss ) hence why the O shape with her mouth

I think the "old" hair looks beter though, or at least has better shape, it might be the loose hairs thats changing the silhouette to much on the new one. the concept have these really clean fluffy hair blobs that you lost with the loose hairs.

the face looks a bit wonky in front view, not sure how much you wanna deviate from the concept though. but I think the lips could use some more volume at least, the inflate brush would probably do the trick.

About your decision to make the hair less voluminous I think you should have it localized to the head. If you look at the concept there's a lot more hair over her left shoulder than her right shoulder. That means most of the hair shifted over to her left shoulder because of the rotation of her torso. I'm probably nitpicking but those were my two cents

And while what Catzcratch said about the the reason for the lips may be true, I'd suggest leaving them the way they are. If you're not going to rig her it will be better for your portfolio to follow the concept instead of making a non-expressive face.Really amazing sculpting on the hair btw.

Haha, the mouth, guys... :'D I've tweaked it so often already. I'm trying to get the expression in, even through I'd love to rig it. I should just pick a goal and go with it. But I'll definitely tweak it some more. @lotet&nbsp;are there any other pointers on the front view besides the mouth that I could take a look at?

Thanks for the opinions on the hair. I felt like I had a good thing going but was deviating from the concept too much. Now it looks like a mishmash between my style and the concept. Again, I should pick one of the two and stick with it. @polymator I won't put the swing in the hair yet (to fall over one shoulder), since I'll pose it and then tweak the hair.

Sometimes I'm hesitant of really pushing my own style and take on the concept, and thus I try to match the concept better but... This doesn't always give the best result and it makes me not have a clear goal in mind. How do you guys feel about taking a style and converting it to your own interpretation?

@shanana I think it's fine to tweak, you always have to assume quite a bit when working from a concept with only one angle like this one. As long as you don't change the intent of the design I'd say there is no problem, it's all subjective of course to what degree something may be changed, but I think everyone understands that sometimes elements of the 2d concept doesn't translate well into 3d and hence it has to be changed/tweaked for something more suitable.

Hi! I really love this, you did a wonderful job of translating the shapes to 3d. With the mouth/front of the face, I couldn't explain what I would suggest, but I've done a paintover/gif to show how I would approach getting something that works in 3d and matches the feel on the concept. I wouldn't worry about getting something that lines up 100% with the original, as it was only designed as a side view to begin with? I think trying to stick a bit closer to human anatomy while keeping the stylised facial proportions would be a good bet. Anyway, these are 100% just suggestions and really rough! What you have is already nice

(if you're curious, changes were - increased the gap between the eyes, made the eyes narrower from the front, rounded the jawline, reduced the upper lip, increased the lower lip, softened the nose and ears, enlarged the teeth)

This is what I adjusted so far with the feedback I received from some. I like the way the eyes are in the concept, so I think I'll leave them as they are atm.I'll also completely change the hair. So much to do...................

I like a lot of the adjustments future-fiction did too, but it is up to you on how you interpret the face and what's important for you to convey the same character from the concept art.You probably already do this, but I did just want to chime in for 2 seconds on the subject of interpreting a concept from a single image. I know that when it comes to faces, it can sometimes be infuriating playing the 'whats different' game and continuously pushing and pulling to nail those lines and shapes from that main concept while still retaining both appeal and structure from all angles. It's especially daunting trying to extrapolate that 3d form when working with a concept with such a unique graphic style. But I think one huge resource you actually have with someone like Jessica Madorran is that she's been developing this really strong personal style consistently throughout her artistic career.

So oftentimes, similar features drawn around the same period of the development of her stylistic canon might show how she intends to put those facial features together in 3d. So if I'm ever finding myself struggling with something tricky like the lips or eyes, I like to try and find another angle of a similar feature she's done and use that to help wrap my head around her style. Obviously it's still entirely up to your interpretation on what's 'similar', but just thought it might be useful to mention for other people

I picked out a few images from her gallery I thought could be helpful. But you're much more in-tune with the style already and these may not be so informative for you sorry, hopefully I didn't just wall-of-text this thread pointlessly haha. In any case, the piece looks great and I can't wait to see it finished

Thanks @Funky Bunnies, I've looked at other works from her for the body but not for the face - yet. So thanks for the reminder, it really helped!

Great gif indeed, @future-fiction, I tried to implement the lips more in this way and it definitely helps. The eyes I'm not going to change too much for different reasons: I feel like the example in the gif is very disney-esque, and that's something I try to stay away from as a style. And secondly I plan on rigging her and her eyes, so she'll be able to open and close her eyes in the rig.

I completely redid the hair, and a lot of tweaking the face.Also threw away the puffy sleeves (and just did them in max this time ) and played around with the shoes...

Nice hair update!! Did you end up moving the eyes closer together? The shape looks much better overall, I think this works fine ^^ I feel like the teeth look a tad small and make the lip area look a bit noisy, you could maybe chunk those up?

These latest updates are great, subtle stuff but it's making such a huge difference. I was going to comment on her ears looking a little too overinflated earlier but you sorted them out in the latest, looking much better. I'd also love to hear how you handled the hair. Something like a hair curve brush over a base combined with dynamesh and polished up, or just straight up hand sculpted?